


A Cage of Her Own Making

by sylph_of_eons



Category: Kirby (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Existential Crisis, Gen, Implied Parental Abuse, Parental Death, Tecnically, susie doesnt get hurt and comfort cause she still needs to have character progression, this might turn into a part of an eventual three no more reboot we'll see, villain susie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28777767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylph_of_eons/pseuds/sylph_of_eons
Summary: This was now the third week in a row Susie had come to Dreamland using a robot to fend off the Meta-Knights and Dreamland’s Royal Guard. And the third week in a row where Bandana Waddle Dee, occasionally assisted by Kirby, had to beat her robots and send her back home.It was clear that Susie’s reasons for joining the Star Allies to defeat Void Termina were self-motivated, and it was even clearer that Meta Knight wanted nothing to do with her, let alone let her in Kirby’s large and ever-expanding friend group.She had a long way to go until that would ever happen.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	A Cage of Her Own Making

“Ugh! How does this keep happening!?”

Bandana Dee took a tentative step back, avoiding the hunks of scrap metal that now laid around his. “Gee, I don’t know Susie. It was honestly pretty easy for me to jam my spear into the robot’s joints and tear it apart that way.”

The pink-haired secretary-slash-scientist twirled around, grumbling to herself angrily. “That question was rhetorical, you know?” She said to herself, barely audible.

“What was that?” Bandana Dee continued, honestly more annoyed with the scheming secretary than anything else at this point. “You do realize that if you don’t leave, I’ll get King Dedede!” He shouted, trying his best to sound authoritative and professional. 

This was now the third week in a row Susie had come to Dreamland using a robot to fend off the Meta-Knights and Dreamland’s Royal Guard. And the third week in a row where Bandana Waddle Dee, occasionally assisted by Kirby, had to beat her robots and send her back home.

It was clear that Susie’s reasons for joining the Star Allies to defeat Void Termina were self-motivated, and it was even clearer that Meta Knight wanted nothing to do with her, let alone let her in Kirby’s large and ever-expanding friend group.

She had a long way to go until that would ever happen.

With a forlorn sigh, Susie pulled her phone out her pocket and began typing in the Notes application. “-Update the joints. Whatever…” She mumbled, still not paying a lot of attention to Bandana Waddle Dee.

“-Are you even listening!?” Bandana snapped angrily, a tone that was very rare for the waddle dee Captain. “Ugh…” Defeatedly, the waddle dee pulled out his own phone, calling Dedede’s number. “I’m calling Dedede right now!”

“No need.” Susie whipped her head around, her expression infuriatingly relaxed. “I’m already gone.” Susie clicked a button on her phone and in a couple of seconds, the sound of a small helicopter could be heard approaching the grassy field.

Susie cooly stretched her hand upwards, snatching the handle of her heli-transporter as it flew above her, beginning to fly off into the sky with a cheeky smile.

“Tell his Majesty, I said hi!” She said smugly, pressing a glove to her mouth and blowing Bandana Dee an equally smug kiss. “Ta-tah!” With that she began cackling maniacally, as she began to fly out of sight.

“Ugh.” Bandana Dee just grumbled again, before turning to make his way back to Castle Dedede in defeat. 

\---

“Sorry for not calling sooner, Dedede.” Bandana apologized, now having returned to Castle Dedede’s throne room.

The throne room was currently more busy than it had been in the past couple of days, as today Dedede was hosting a tea party picnic. 

Among the crowd was Adeleine painting a scene of the view of the Dreamland countryside from the peak of Mt. Dedede. Marx was currently practicing various party tricks with his signature jester ball. Parasol Dee, Escargoon and some of Meta-Knights were eating around a picnic blanket placed in the middle of the throne room, while Dedede sat in the throne (although it was only a matter of time before he went to grab something to eat for himself.

“Oh, don’t blame yourself, Bandee.” Dedede replied casually, thankfully not as disappointed about this development as Bandana Dee was. “All things considered, Susie’s not _that_ big of a deal. Eventually, we’ll find her and I’ll clobber her myself.”

“I guess…” Bandana mumbled quietly, still not convinced that everything is as fine as Dedede says.

“Just one problem with that, Sire-”

Dedede and Bandana both turned towards Escargoon, who was still sitting with the others at the picnic blanket.

“-We’ve tried to find where Susie is living now before but we still haven’t found anything.” The snail-folk said pointedly with an incredulous expression on his face. “Trust me, I’ve gone through the paperwork to see if she may have started living in Dreamland under a false name or something, but I still haven’t found anything!

“Maybe she’s just living somewhere else on the planet?” Parasol Dee suggested, clearly trying her best to be helpful.

“Not possible.” Mace Knight replied from across the blanket. “Susie’s not exactly known for being subtle and we would be able to pick up her crazy tech from a mile away, but we haven’t seen anything from the Halberd.” 

“Yeah, like the Halberd's tech has never been beat by Susie before-” Adeleine griped, seeming to be struggling with her painting.

Everybody in the room gave her a cold stare. 

The human girl turned around with a guilty expression in response to the awkward silence. “What, too soon?” She shrugged with an apologetic smile. 

“Hmm…” Marx loudly hummed to himself, twirling atop his ball. “Maybe...Susie is living in space!” His irreverent laugh following that statement indicated that he didn’t believe that claim as much as the rest of the room (which was not a lot…).

“Listen, don't get me wrong. I don’t want the girl anywhere near the castle, but I still at least want to try and talk to her.” Dedede grunted as he slumped further into his chair. “It’s not like I think we should let her be friends with Kirby either! I just...want to know why exactly she did all of that?”

“It is a bit strange.” Bandana Dee replied sheepishly. “Why would she go through with the entire mechanization plan if she knew she was just going to backstab Haltmann when all was said and done?” 

“Maybe being a cold manipulator and backstabber is just her nature?” Escargoon snarked. “-I mean, it’s a possibility, for sure.”

The rest of the group mumbled noncommittally in response, clearly illustrating how there was still some lack of agreement among the group about this subject.

Following, the front doors to the throne room opened as Meta Knight stepped inside.

“Forgive my tardiness. I had to finish a sparring match with Kibble Blade by Vegetable Valley.” He announced, and the fresh nicks and cuts on his metallic mask supported his claim.

“Did you win?” Dedede asked the knight teasingly.

Meta Knight huffed, raising himself on his tiptoes as he did whenever he was acting particularly pompous. “Of course.” He replied curtly as if it wasn’t even worth stating. 

The knight proceeded to march towards the picnic blanket and Axe Knight picked up a chocolate parfait and handed it to him. “For you, Sir!”

Meta Knight stopped in his tracks and began flustering. “Axe Knight- You-”

“Just eat it, sweet tooth.” Mace Knight deadpanned with an unamused stare. 

“OK.” Meta Knight whimpered before taking the glass into his hands and adjusting his mask just enough to expose his mouth. 

Bandana turned back towards Dedede with a concerned expression. “-Best that we just abandon this topic for now?”

Dedede’s lazy smile dissolved into a frown as he still stared towards where Meta Knight was sitting. “Yeah.”

\---

With her Business Suit, Susie had flown all the wall back to the Haltmann Works Company Spacestation, located on a slab on rock on one of Planet Popstar’s rings. Apparently, a couple of years back, Popstar had a second moon that Kirby blew up in the middle of some altercation (Susie remembers that it involved the Star Rod somehow?) and now the moon’s dust formed the rings of Popstar.

Neat.

Regardless, Susie had managed to locate a particularly sizable remnant of the moon for her to build a new lab on. The lab was cold, metallic, pristine; just how a semi-synthetic lifeform who grew up in such an environment liked it. 

She quickly passed through the dark and empty hallways ( _Why did she make it so big anyways?)_ of the base until she reached her new office.

In design, it was practically identical to Haltmann’s old office, including a perfect view of the upper half of Popstar from her regal synthetic-leather chair. 

Susie dramatically fell into the chair and allowed herself to twirl around in it joyfully for a few seconds before straightening her posture and scooting closer to the ornate wooden desk. 

_Time to get to work._

A blue hologram panel appeared before her, displaying the many unfinished or scrapped blueprints she had for her various robotic projects. Most of them were “stock” copies of the many cyborgs the HWC constructed over the course of the initial Popstar invasion. 

At this point, Susie realized that cyborgs were, in no way, more effective than the stock copies. The only potential pro they did have is that they didn’t require as much metal, but after working on some of the cyborgs...she realized she didn’t like working with flesh. The way it always spasmed when touched the wrong way made it much harder for Susie to pretend the people- _subjects_ \- she was working on were incapicated and unaware of the Mother Computer’s augmentations on them. 

She felt sick thinking about it.

_(_ She felt sick with _herself.)_

She was glad that receiving synthetic augmentations was standard among her species. That way, she wouldn’t have to think about pain like that.

(That way, she wouldn’t have to think about what it meant for her to be _alive._ )

Susie jerked herself forwards, catching herself before she fell face flat on the wooden desk.

_No, stop._ She cursed her own thoughts. _I have to work!_

The secretary took a few moments to recollect her thoughts. _What was I doing…? Ah, yes. I was going to rework the robot designs_

**_You were thinking about how much of a piece of garbage you are._ **

Susie flinched again, just as she had zoomed in one of the blueprints again. 

_No, I-_ She looked around the room, as if someone else was watching her have a **breakdown.**

The room was empty of course. Just like the entirety of the space station. 

She inhaled a sharp, now having confirmed what she already knew (not because she needed to breath, her augmentations made it so she never needed air). Tentatively, she once more looked at the blueprints.

_What did the waddle dee say? That I need to fix the joints?-_

**_He’s nothing more but a statistic to you. You can’t even remember his name._ **

Susie screwed her eyes shut. _Stop! I do know his name! It’s Bandana Dee!_ She tapped a finger on where the one of the joints of the robot was located, highlighting it yellow and pulling up a configuration menu. 

The secretary slowly and carefully dragged a metal plate asset to place it on top of the joint.

**_Why am I even doing this?_ **

Susie angrily slammed a fist atop the wooden desk. She felt nothing. 

_I need to fix the robot so it can’t be beat!_

**_By who?_ **

_By anyone!_ Susie screamed at herself. _It must be perfect!_

**_Why?_ **

_Because I’m tired of being beat!_ She hurriedly began placing metal plates over all of the robot’s exposed joints. 

**_But you deserve it._ **

_YES, BUT I’M TIRED OF BEING HURT._ She quickly shoved herself away from the desk, her chair rolling until it hit the back wall. 

  
  


**_Your feelings don’t matter._ **

_Nothing matters._ Susie hopped out her chair, opting to turn her attention to spatial view behind her. She stared into the inky black abyss speckled by the light of the Gamble Galaxy’s other planets and questioned-

**_Why did Another Dimension not have those other lights? Why was it so large and dark?_ **

Her gaze was now getting lost in the dark abyss. Before she would look out into space in order to find inspiration, a new target for Haltmann’s business ventures, hope-

But now she was stumbling away from the window in fear. Haltmann is gone. Destroyed by his own creation; his own _greed._

Haltmann died alone with his only companion being a machine, a machine that destroyed all memories of his past, his family, his _daughter_ , in order to leave a husk of a man who had forgotten whatever good he once had to become a monster who only sought to consume and devour. 

As Susie continued pressing her way back towards the door of her office, she suddenly caught sight of a framed photo on her desk. A photo of Maxwell Haltmann and Susana Patrya Haltmann, staring at her with their matching, glassy-blue eyes. 

She could no longer keep walking, she simply fell to the floor; completely helpless. (Helpless to what? Space? The office? Her father? _Herself?_ )

This entire spaceship, her _creation_ , was nothing more than an echo of the life she once had. The life she wanted to destroy. The life she wanted to _own._

Its hallways, its labs, its office, were all smaller carbon copies of the Access Arc at its prime. Just like Haltmann, she built a sanctuary riddled in nostalgia without even knowing what all of it was supposed to mean. 

The only difference was now it was just her. Her father wasn’t here now. Haltmann wasn’t here. Susana wasn’t here. 

There was no past to relive, because everyone who lived that life was gone. 

Now it was just her. 


End file.
